As the Red Cross hospital train headed for Brussels from Liege, diverted south because of a rocket-torn section of track on the more direct westward line, David fell under the slow, hypnotic sway of the carriage, the train restricted for a time to no more than forty kilometers an hour because of the danger of air-sewn mines that might still be in the area, hidden by snow.
The clickety clack of the wheels passing over the ties took David back to his childhood of going up from New York to Albany, the River Meuse, effortlessly slipping by him now, a stand-in for the narrower reaches of the Hudson River. But he knew the analogy was a strained one, more a pining for home than an accurate remembrance of things past. America was not only a long way off in his mind, it was another time, so remote, so unlike the war-filled continent that he was part of, that it might as well be on another planet. It wasn’t simply that the snow-dusted flat country around the Meuse didn’t approximate the heavily wooded banks along the upper reaches of the Hudson, but the smells were so unfamiliar.
Europe always smelled different — an older, colder brick smell, and especially in winter, with all the fumes of coal-burning furnaces that had come back into use as North Sea gasoline supplies that came from England via the Channel’s “subfloat” pipeline were jealously coveted by the armed forces. The brownish haze from the coal fires created at once the most polluted and beautiful sunsets Europe had seen in the last hundred years.
David saw a Red Cross nurse coming through from the carriage loaded with badly wounded abdominal cases into the walking-wounded carriage, where David and the British sergeant were sitting with a number of other American, British, and Belgian troops. The nurse’s experienced eye was looking for repatriation cases, which, if they were up to it, would be sent on from Brussels to the Channel ports, when these were cleared of debris, and sent back to England. The sergeant dug David in the ribs. “Look at the knockers on that, Davey boy. Imagine those dangling—”
“All right,” said David, thwarting more detailed description. The sergeant, he decided, was one of those who took a perverse pleasure in getting the sexually deprived soldiers worked up about “dipping your wick.” David turned his attention to the scenery, the train picking up speed, as he heard an American in front of him, in a neck brace, telling his buddy the train’s engineer had told him they would pass through Waterloo on their way up from Namur to Brussels. Right now David didn’t care about Waterloo — last thing he needed was to see another battlefield, no matter how historic it was. What he wanted was privacy, longing to read Melissa’s letter, to hear her voice. But he wasn’t going to spoil it like a dessert you’re so hungry for that it’s gone before you’ve time to savor the taste. Letters from home, like everything else in this war, had to be rationed carefully. He glanced back at the toilet lineup, but there were too many.
Soon his eyes were tearing because of the cigarette smoke in the carriage. The war, he mused, had been a monumental setback for the antismoking lobby. His older brother, Robert, or so his mother had told him, had mentioned it in his letters home, too, opining that sometimes he felt that, along with looking to escape unhappy situations back home, half the sub crews had joined the silent service because on a sub, you could smoke all you wanted.
“You are enjoying the scenery, yes?”
David looked up and saw the pretty young admitting clerk, Lili, the British sergeant already unabashedly leering at her, his cockney tone taking on a decidedly vulgar edge. “ ‘Ello, luv!” he said, patting the inside of his thigh. “Want to sit on Daddy’s knee then?”
“No, thank you, Daddy.” She smiled.
David burst out laughing, sending a burning pain down his arm, but he didn’t care. Momentarily he forgot everything unpleasant in his life — the heart-thumping run he’d made on the Stadthagen dump, the raid on Pyongyang, and the churning doubt inside him about whether or not he could withstand the strain of any more combat, wondering how close he was — his body was — to simply throwing in the towel, his will exhausted by the combination of physical and mental fatigue.
The sergeant wasn’t amused by Lili’s repartee, a burning resentment in his eyes against the young girl, a resentment that David felt partly responsible for because of having laughed at him. “Ah—” said David in an effort to change the subject. “Someone was saying we’ll be going through Waterloo?”
“Yes,” said Lili. “It is very famous. You know about this?”
“He doesn’t know anything, luv,” cut in the sergeant. “ ‘E’s just a boy. What you need, luv—”
“My name is Lili.” She said it without rancor but evenly.
“All right, Lili luv — listen. You know where we can get a snort?”
She looked blankly at him.
“You know,” said the sergeant as he motioned, knocking back a drink. “Booze? Ah—le vin, eh?”
“No,” she said, “I—” The train lurched, approaching the bend near Auvelais, and Lili bumped into the sergeant, quickly righting herself, blushing. “I am sorry, I—”
“Sorry!” said the sergeant. “Don’t you apologize, Lili. Just what we need on this—”
“Lay off,” said David.
“My, my,” the sergeant snorted at David. “I think he’s jealous, Lili. And ‘im wiv all those lovely letters. ‘Please, Davey, my hero — I want to marry you.’ Eh?” The sergeant was digging his elbow further into David. “Eh — that’s what they want, isn’t it, Brentwood? A bit of the old stick?”
David turned on him, but the sergeant, his face having lost all trace of humor, wasn’t to be interrupted, his grin the same expression he’d worn when whacking the heads off the brambles by the canal. “Can’t you take a fucking joke, matey? Eh?” Lili moved off.
“She’s gone now, Sarge,” said David icily. “You don’t have to—”
“Sergeant to you, Dick!”
“All right, sergeant,” said David quietly. “She’s gone.”
The sergeant sneered. “You fucking heros are all the same. Get a bit of fucking tin on your chest and you think you’ve got it on tap, right?” David turned away, refusing to be drawn further into argument, fixing his gaze back on the white-snow-dusted blur of the hills to the southeast, where the low country of Wallonia gave way to the formidable barrier of the Ardennes. His great-grandfather had been there — when Hitler’s panzers had broken through to make their last great counterattack of the Second World War, bringing the U.S. Allied advance to a bloody halt, inflicting over fifty-five thousand casualties on First Army’s Eighth Corps, and destroying more than seven hundred American tanks.
Soon David heard a noise like someone farting in a bathtub — it was the sergeant asleep, David marveling at yet another example of Murphy’s Law run rampant. If the army, concerned that David’s injuries might give him some trouble en route to Brussels, had wanted to choose a more unsuitable candidate for escorting him to identify the SPETS at the in-camera trials in Brussels, it couldn’t have chosen anyone as unsuitable as the British sergeant.
The sergeant’s mouth was agape, revealing a row of tobacco-and tea-stained teeth. The English, David had discovered, drank enormous quantities of tea. Now and then at the front he’d seen British Centurion tanks in revetment areas, the drivers jerry-rigging a small can of water by the exhaust, the water quickly coming to a roiling boil, and they’d let the tea stew until it was the color of Coca-Cola.
The sergeant mumbled something and closed his mouth, issuing a nasal whistle that immediately caused a stir farther down the aisle, a British naval rating, head bandaged, shouting, “Shut his cake hole!” The man across the aisle calmed the seaman down. Later the American sitting directly in front of David said the Limey sailor was probably freaking out because the whistle sounded just like the Russian RU-six thousands. “Depth charge rockets,” the American explained. “Russkis fire ‘em in horseshoe pattern — twelve at once. Only, they’ve put whistles on ‘em. Like the Stukas in World War Two. Frightens the piss out of you, the sub boys say.”
“You couldn’t hear ‘em under the water, though, could you?” proffered a sapper across the aisle who looked as if there was nothing wrong with him until David saw the man had no left hand.
“Like hell you can’t,” answered the man in front of David.
“One of my buddies is on one of those pigboats — says underwater, you can hear sound four times easier.”
“Faster,” commented David. “Four times faster.”
“You been in subs? A marine?”
“No,” answered David. “One of my brothers.”
“No way, man,” said the sapper across the aisle. “I want something I can get out of. In a hurry.”
“Like what?” challenged someone else.
“Yankee Stadium,” came the answer, the man who said it turning self-congratulatingly to David. But David was no longer there, having seen the line for the John was no more, easing his way out past the sergeant. Outside, canals flashed by under a leaden sky, the train picking up more speed, its sound louder now there wasn’t so much snow to muffle it, the train heading away from Wallonia, where Lili came from, and toward Waterloo, where Wellington had stopped Bonaparte.
Sitting in the relative peace of the washroom, David took out Melissa’s letter. A salvo of Russian rockets couldn’t have stunned him more than the first sentence:
Richard and I are engaged. I know this might be quite a shock, but I wanted to tell you straightaway. You always told me, Davey, that we should be honest with one another— that’s what I’m trying to do now. I hope you understand. It just sort of happened between Rick and me. I thought we were “just good friends”—I know you’ll think that sounds awfully corny, but honestly, we were — I mean we are. I mean we are friends, you know, but, well, Rick has really become quite a different person since you left. Oh, I know I’m not saying this right but — gee, I guess that makes it sound like your going overseas had something to do with it. Not really. It was actually sort of accidental and—
The train took a corner at speed, its rails squealing, throwing David hard against the hold bar. His stomach tightened. Christ! The thought of the wimp in bed with her made him want to throw up. While others were fighting and dying thousands of miles from home, the bow-tied weasel had got into her. Mr. Bland, cost-benefit analysis Stacy would no doubt have meticulously planned his moves. First, exemption from the draft in return for a four-year stint as an SAC missile silo jockey, sitting sixty feet under the ground in his protected, superhardened shelter, wearing his fucking cravat. It was true — women went for the uniform. Hell, what were a grunt’s fatigues next to sharp air force blue?
“Rick feels bad about it,” Melissa explained. “He hadn’t planned it that way.”
“No!” said David. “What other way did he plan it, the fucking—”
There was a thump on the door. “Hey, you all right in there?”
“What—?” shouted Brentwood. “Yeah. I’m having a crap. You mind?”
“Enjoy, man! Enjoy!”
“Damn!” said David, skimming over the rest of the letter, one phrase leaping out at him. “Richard—” Funny how women always used the guy’s full name when they were going to shaft you. Made it sound more civilized, David guessed.
… Richard has gotten me interested in the SAC program, too. I didn’t want to write you until I’d qualified. It’s a very intensive course, as you probably know. Didn’t want to talk about it too much for fear it mightn’t happen. Well — I passed! Not only that, but with “outstanding” commendation. So there, Davey! Who said women couldn’t man the silos? Of course, they’ve been doing it for years, I know, so I’m hardly breaking new ground. But — and this is so ridiculous — SAC won’t permit mixed teams — both operators have to be of the same sex. Can you imagine? TV cameras all over the place.
The next word was blocked out by the censor. Jesus, thought David, even the censor knew he, Brentwood, D., Medal of Honor and Silver Star, was being dumped. “… As if,” the letter went on,
anyone would try any hanky panky down there! Even if you wanted to, there are too many drills to keep you busy the whole shift. Anyway, I really like it, Davey. And it’s kind of nice, I think, that you’re over there doing your thing for the war and I’m here. Sort of keeps us closer. At least we can write, I hope. Some of the girls who have steadies on the subs say they don’t get replies for months on end. Hope you can write me more often than that! I called your mom the other day. She seems fine but is worried, of course, about your brother Ray, well, all of you, of course. But at least she more or less knows how things are with you and Robert and Lana. I mean you do write, but Ray, she says, has just stopped writing altogether. He’s had more laser plastic surgery apparently and it’s amazing what they can do nowadays. But apparently he’s been really depressed lately. He’s asked his wife (sorry — I can’t remember her name) to stop bringing down their two kids because he doesn’t want them to see him that way. Or so your mom says. Your dad’s taking it hardest, I think, though of course he would never admit it!!! Your mom says he keeps telling Ray, you know, “When the going gets tough,” etc., etc., etc.
“Oh Jesus,” David sighed, “no, no—”
He also told Ray the doctors told him that despite the severity of the burns, Ray’s physical condition isn’t too bad really and that he could get another command in time. Of course, your dad means something like a minesweeper. Important, I guess, like trash collectors, but hardly a command — at least not for someone who used to run a guided missile frigate off Korea. Talking of Korea, I guess you’ve heard as much as we have. Aren’t you glad you’re not there now! It really is scary. Rick says that we should’ve nuked them soon as they came across the Yalu. He says that what we should do now is—
The rest of it was crossed out by the censor’s pen.
Just like Stacy, thought David. They put him in a hole somewhere in the Midwest in some friggin’ wheat field and he thinks he’s an authority on how to run the war. “Very scary in Canada,” Melissa went on.
Six big grain silos — huge things like round skyscrapers — no windows and full of wheat, waiting for rail transport to the Great Lakes. They were blown up. ABC Late Night showed shots of one of them — terrific explosion. Apparently they build up a lot of electricity from the dry grain dust and it makes for a very explosive atmosphere, but of course, sabotage is suspected. There’s a big row about how come ABC got an exclusive — live coverage of one of the silos blowing its top. They said they got an anonymous tip, which is probably right — I mean whoever blew it up probably wanted us to see it. Just to show how vulnerable we are. Now everyone’s saying our big mistake was to have let so many so-called “refugees’ into the States during the Gorbachev years — turns out apparently that the head of the KGB was stuffing in as many agents as possible. Nobody figured what would happen after Gorbachev, I guess.
Must run now. I am sorry, Davey, but I wanted to tell you right away. Please write. I’d love to hear from you.
Love, Lissa.
There were hugs and kisses.
“Hey!” came a British voice from outside. “Don’t make a meal of it, Yank.”
“Hero’s probably wanking himself off,” said another voice. It sounded like the sergeant, so that when David came out, he was ready for him. But it wasn’t. Instinctively the British soldiers stepped back, one pinned up against the water fountain, his sleeve getting wet. Brentwood’s face was white with anger. As he passed them, the men waiting for the toilet fell silent, and for a moment it was as if the noise of the train drowned all else, even the sergeant’s snoring, while David, mumbling, “Excuse me,” made his way back to his seat by the window, the letter now a crumpled, tight ball in his fist.
One of the soldiers waiting outside the toilet, a corporal, lit a cigarette and noted quietly, “A Dear John letter. You think?”
“I’ll put a fiver on it,” said an Australian gunner, arm in a sling.
“Dear John in the John,” a cockney quipped.
“Not funny, mate,” said the corporal. “Knock the piss out of you, that will. Rotten bitch.”
“He should chuck it. Throw it away,” said the corporal’s mate.
“Nah,” said the cockney. “Our ‘ero’s a bloody brooder, I reckon. ‘E’ll covet that, ‘e will. Read it over an’ over. Torture ‘imself proper. Drop ‘is bundle, ‘e will. No more gongs for him, mate.”
“Ah, I dunno,” said the Australian reflectively, drawing thoughtfully on the cigarette. “Might take it out on the Russkis and win another friggin’ gong.”
“A Purple ‘Eart’s only medal ‘e’ll get,” rejoined the cockney. “A loser.”
“Dunno,” opined the Australian, lighting a cigarette from the corporal. “Hears his bird’s getting screwed by the milkman. First he’s mad, full ‘o piss and vinegar, know what I mean? Then he goes really crazy — runs at a fucking machine gun. He’ll get his gong.” The Australian blew out a cloud of smoke and looked down at the cockney. “But it’ll be posthumous.”
“Well,” answered the cockney, “ ‘e won’t get it in bloody Brussels. All ‘e’ll get there is the clap.”
“No way,” concluded the Australian definitively. “Right now he hates all women, I reckon.”
“Who are you?” asked the cockney derisively. “Dr. Freud?”
“Listen, mate, I know about those blokes. Overachievers. Type A. Go, go, go, and then suddenly they look around and mere’s no one there. Then they can go either way. He’s on a high wire, mate, make no mistake.”
When Lili came through the carriage again, clutching a sheaf of papers in her hands, checking each patient had the right chart to avoid the kinds of bureaucratic foul-ups that so often bedeviled administrators trying to keep track of wounded as they moved from train to buses to ships, she saw David and could tell instantly something dreadful had happened to him. He was staring out the carriage window like an old man, the coloration in his face splotchy, teeth clenched like those patients she’d seen who ground their teeth at night and wondered why they woke up with a pounding headache — a look of such unrelieved bitterness in his eyes that it seemed to distort the very contours of his face.
Lili could only wonder what might have caused it. Her heart wanted to go out to him not only because she had found him attractive when she’d first seen him but because he was an American. In her father’s house the word “American” had always been uttered in reverential tones. When she was a child, her father had taken her to the South, deep into French-speaking Wallonia, to Bastogne, where the Nazis had made their deep armored thrust through Belgium in December of 1944. Lili had stood in awe of the huge monument outside the town with the Latin inscription, which her father translated: “To the American liberators. The Belgian people remember.” He had told her of how his great-grandfather and his wife and two children, like so many other Belgians, owed their lives to the Americans who, though surrounded by a ring of German steel in that bitter Christmas, wouldn’t surrender. At school, Lili had heard the story of how the American general, given the surrender terms by the German commander, had replied, “Nuts,” though her father—”in the interest of truth,” as he gravely told her — felt compelled to explain to her in order to save her any “embarrassment” as she grew older that what the American general, McAuliffe, after whom the town square in Bastogne was named, had actually said was not “Nuts” but an English synonym to do with, as Lili’s father put it, a part of the male anatomy.
Because of the fearlessness of her youth and because she had always assumed Americans were heroes, Lili felt that no matter how off-putting David’s mood or appearance was now, she must try to help him. He was, after all, far away from his home, and to have fought with such courage must have exacted a terrible cost. She was so used to seeing soldiers whose wounds were external, she had to remind herself that some of the most terrible wounds, as her father had so often told her, were unseen, inside the heart. Perhaps, she thought, he was worried about the coming ordeal of identifying the captive SPETS. It was not a thing, she imagined, that a soldier liked doing, even to his most bitter enemy, even though she knew such people must be punished. Perhaps after he had been to the NATO HQ, she could help him forget the ordeal by showing him around Brussels. She must be brave, she resolved, brace herself and risk his anger. The Belgians’ debt of honor to the Americans, her father had said, was eternal, and every generation must do its best to repay.